The present invention is directed to a process for treating various refuse/waste materials, and more particularly, for treating smoke, solid garbage material from domestic industrial and commercial sources and aqueous sewage.
An ever-increasing problem of the modern society has been the disposal of various domestic, commercial and agricultural waste/refuse materials. As the nations advance in technology and become more and more industrialized, the problem of the waste disposal burgeons. In addition to the smoke emanating from various mills, factories and the like, and the human waste in the form of sewage, the refuse material generally includes solid waste, such as garbage, rubbish, animal waste, grass clippings, weeds, cotton and corn stalks, waste from animal slaughter houses, paper, wood, plastic, etc. One way of disposing the refuse material has been to dispose it of by land-filling. However, this method has led to contamination of soil and has not been found to be very effective. The disposal method most commonly employed is burning of the refuse in suitable incinerating mechanisms and burial thereof in land-fill operations. This method, however, adds to contamination and pollution of the air, and is thus not preferable.
In recent years, several factors have caused an evaluation of the above-described collection and disposal techniques to be made. In the first place, changes in lifestyle, increasing population, and the like cause increase in the amounts of solid refuse which must be collected and disposed of. It has been estimated that more than 220 billion tons of solid refuse is collected annually in the United States at a cost that has become a tremendous financial burden which the responsible local municipalities are finding increasingly difficult to bear. Other factors, as noted above, of general concern are the well known pollution, health and odor problems associated with the burning and burying techniques.
The undesirable results and high costs of the abovedescribed inefficient and antiquated methods of collection and disposal of refuse, along with the wasting of reclaimable materials and the lost of potential source of energy, have spurred a search for new methods of handling such refuse. Many systems and mechanisms have been proposed and built for more efficient handling and disposal of refuse material, with some of those systems designed for the purpose of reclaiming materials, others for the production of methane gas, and still others simply for the purpose of shredding the refuse for more compaction thereof.
In any event, the relatively new systems almost without exception employ some of a mill or grinding mechanism for improving the handling characteristics of the refuse. In general, the mills, and/or grinding devices being employed in these newly developed and proposed systems are mechanisms which were originally designed for other purposes such as pulverizing ores. In many instances, these prior art milling or grinding devices have been employed in the new refuse handling systems in the exact originally developed form and have not been entirely satisfactory due to the fact that they were designed to handle a completely different type of material or materials. In other instances, these prior art milling or grinding devices have been modified somewhat from their original form in an attempt to adapt those devices to the various problems of handling refuse materials, and those modified prior art mechanisms have also not proven entirely satisfactory.
As noted above, the prior art is replete with many methods and apparatus for disposing of solid and aqueous types of refuse/waste material. Some examples of these methods and apparatus are disclosed in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,160,354; 3,212,233; 3,985,086; 3,987,970; 4,144,167; 4,151,794; 4,157,961; 4,253,940; 4,437,866; 4,493,459; and 4,586,659.
However, there is a need for a process by which solid and aqueous wastes, as well as gaseous waste, such as smoke, can be processed to convert it to a useful product.